Sorta Secret Social Media Searching: Keeping up with the Solomons

I recently agreed to contribute a few of One Degree’s Week in Review posts.   So now, I should probably admit that my Google Reader has been feeling mighty neglected these days…  The problem is that I’m on Twitter where I follow some pretty smart people, so I am constantly reading (or at least bookmarking ) interesting links I see there – at the expense of looking for information on other places.

Now, there’s a chance that “Just Noticing Stuff on Twitter” is the best way to go, but, you know, that seems somewhat unlikely. So, inspired by Social Media Sensei Joe Solomon’s “Top Secret Twitter Secrets ” at the last Net Tuesday, I have figured out how I’m going to stay on top of the social media goings on.

Here are some of the Sorta-Secret Search techniques I’ll be employing:

• Google Reader. Go through Google Reader (and share posts I like) (OK, this one is not too secret, but given my behavior recently, it’s pretty much a secret to me)
• Twitter Search Feed.  Using one of Joe’s brilliant tricks, I have created a feed from Twitter Search which contains only items people are  Retweeting (RT)  about “marketing” or ”social media” or  “Crowdsourcing”(and a few other related topics) and which contain a link (I’ve also included “social” and “media” alone – because sometimes people will use terms like “social network” or “online media”   (You can also use Tweetdeck’s Preset searches for this purpose, and they are nice, but you don’t seem to be able to choose to see only those tweets with links, so a search feed might work better)
• Delicious Find what’s popular in Delicious for “socialmedia”.  Also look at network – just in case popular vote didn’t capture all the neat items that friends did.
• Social Media News Aggregators on Twitter.  Hey, what the hell, these seem like they have some good stuff, so perhaps a quick peek at something like SocialMedia411

There are likely many more techniques and I would be happy if you shared yours on the comments below.  (I might add one or two to my repertoire, with the self-awareness that if I over-subscribe, it’ll become overwhelming and I just won’t look at it for fear of information avalanche. (Hello, dear Google Reader….  No, no it’s not you, it’s me, really.  Let’s try and work this out.)

Of course I’ll be still picking up what I come across when I look at my Tweetdeck.  But at least now it will be a little more organized (and by “organized” I mean: “less likely to make me weep and pee on the rug”.)

Want More re: How to Find the Info You Want?

Read:

• ReadWriteWeb’s “How to Find the Weirdest Stuff on the Internet” – even if you don’t want to find weird stuff (though, I can’t relate to that)
• Great tips from Duct Tape Marketing’s “Social Media Schedule” to see what John Jantsch does to keep up (seemingly even while he sleeps)

by Monica Hamburg

I’ve Joined del.icio.us

Yeah, it took me awhile. I kept thinking there were only so many hours in a day (and I’m already awake for most of them) so when was I going to find the time to add bookmarks as well…? Well, finally I realized, I’m already reading and bookmarking stuff, why not share…

So feel free to add me: I’m mhamburg